Grace is like salt

I made a chocolate cake once and left the salt out.  There have probably been some other things I've forgotten to include salt in, but that chocolate cake was the most memorable.  I hadn't been baking long, and I was so proud to serve this cake I'd made all by myself.

From the first bite we each took, it was obvious that something was wrong.  This has no flavor!  It barely tastes like chocolate, I thought.  Did I not put enough cocoa? or sugar?  Mom, seasoned cook of many years (no pun intended), wondered aloud, "Did you forget the salt?"  Ah yes, of course.  That's what it was.  But just a couple teaspoons of one simple ingredient - could it really make that much difference?

YES.

You can have the finest imported chocolate, the freshest eggs, the most expensive vanilla, and so on.  You can measure carefully and practice the perfect techniques.  You can even don a chef's hat and crisp white jacket if that makes you feel good.  But none of that will do you any good if you leave the salt out.  My grandma always says, Salt brings the flavors together.  It balances.  It gives depth.  While you may not always taste the salt, you can tell when it's left out.

A Christian life without grace is like a cake without salt: flat and one-dimensional - lacking depth.  We can choose all our other ingredients carefully (think doctrine, discipline, vision, moral character) but we must not forget about grace.  Grace is the not-so-secret ingredient that pulls everything together into one blue-ribbon masterpiece.  Just like my salt-less chocolate cake made no sense to our taste buds ("Hey, this is chocolate cake, why doesn't it taste very much like chocolate?"), a grace-less Christian life makes no sense.

If the God of grace is living in us, then shouldn't our lives reflect that?  Shouldn't they be bursting with flavor?  Shouldn't they be balanced by grace?

Paul writes in Colossians 4:6, "Let your speech [and every other aspect of life] always be with grace, seasoned with salt..."  Jesus takes it a step further and says, "You are the salt of the earth..." (Matthew 5:13, emphasis mine)

God wants His children to be the flesh-and-blood demonstration of grace that the world needs to see.

So pass the grace, everyone.  Let's sprinkle it on!  Generously.  There's no danger of over-gracing - just think of how much grace God has given you!